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Barrett: Leslie Crocker Snyder's Unsavory Campaign Donors  

Tobacco profiteer Bennett LeBow ($10,000), the CEO of the country's fifth largest cigarette maker, gave Snyder $10,000. When the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute named him to its board of trustees in 2005, a media stir forced his immediate resignation. LeBow testified under oath in 1993 that he was unaware of any linkage between cigarettes and cancer; but a few years later, he became the first tobacco mogul to settle with the states suing tobacco companies. His Vector Group sells about ten billion cigarettes a year.

The Daily News noted this week that billionaire Ron Perelman gave Vance $25,000 through his company Mafco Consolidated, which the News said includes a company that makes "a moistening agent used in the making of tobacco products." Not only did the News not mention LeBow's virtually simultaneous $10,000 donation, it missed the fact that Perelman, through his holding company MacAndrews & Forbes, had already given Snyder $25,000. Perelman has weathered many a messy news story, including when his Revlon jet flew then police commissioner Howard Safir to the Oscars in Hollywood, inducing the Conflict of Interests Board to rebuke the commissioner. The Post then revealed that Perelman used bogus NYPD permits to illegally park his limos outside his two spectacular upper eastside townhouses.

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